Friendly Fire (44 page)

"A stranger?" Ya'ari is baffled. "In my office?"

Yes, the tenant from the Pinsker Tower, who showed up with legal papers and is determined to serve them on Ya'ari by hand, personally.

"But why did you let him in my office? Why can't he wait outside?"

"Amotz," protests the secretary, "he's a bereaved father, his son was killed a few months ago; he told me the whole story. It's very crowded in the office with all the computers and drafting tables, and outside the weather is bad, rainy and very windy. But don't worry, he's sitting in the corner and not touching anything."

The elder Ya'ari decides to pass up Kinzie's lunch and take the machinery straight to Gottlieb's elevator factory. He'll eat lunch with the workers, which will remind him of the good old days. But his son is fed up with the whole private elevator festival and announces: You wanted to take charge of the process? Then please, finish it yourself. Let's see if you can draw a rational line from the psychologist to the manufacturer. He says good-bye to his father in front of his childhood home, gets in his car, leaving old Ya'ari and the rest of the contingent to proceed alone to the factory nestled amid orchards in the Sharon region, after warning Francisco and Hilario, "It's up to you two to make sure nothing happens to him."

Through the open door of his office, Ya'ari can see Mr. Kidron sitting stiffly in a heavy winter coat, a knitted ski cap on his knee, his eyes fixed on the swaying branches of the tree outside the window. He has not touched the tea and cookies the secretary brought him. Ya'ari, with an effort, dismisses his foul humor and enters the room cheerfully. The man stands up but does not greet the chief executive, merely hands him the legal complaint. Ya'ari takes it from him, reads it quickly, and asks with a faint smile: "So I'm the only defendant here?"

"Even if there are other defendants, they don't diminish your guilt," the tenants' leader says coldly. "All of you are one corrupt gang, who don't care about the damage you leave behind. You have a tree that makes a pleasant noise outside a closed window, but with us, when we get home and get near the elevator, we don't hear the wind but howls of pain, and there's no reason we should pay with a never ending nightmare for your sloppy calculations."

"Believe me, Mr. Kidron, our calculations are accurate. There are cracks in the shaft."

"So open up the elevators and prove to the construction company that they are to blame."

"Only the manufacturer is authorized to open the elevators. I am only the designer."

"That's what I said, you're a corrupt bunch who shift the blame from one to the other so we can't catch you. But the tenants are sick of it, the blame is now on you, Mr. Ya'ari, and if you want to be free of it, take it to court."

Ya'ari studies him. A man with innocent blue eyes, not tall, but slender under the wet coat. His hiking shoes are covered in mud. Before his son was killed he was surely a pleasant and friendly man.

"As you wish, I'll go to court. But tell me, why is the lawsuit directed only at me?"

"Because you're an approachable person. Even your secretary is nice."

Ya'ari looks over at the tree fighting the wind and places a gentle hand on the bereaved tenant's shoulder.

"Yes, I am an approachable person. It's a failing of mine, but maybe also a virtue. This is an ideal day to locate the defect that is tormenting you, so why wait for the court to acquit me while in the meantime you'll be supporting a hungry lawyer? Let's go take advantage of the storm tonight and check the shaft once and for all. Tomorrow my wife is returning from Africa, and she won't let me leave her in the middle of her first night back. That leaves us only tonight, and because we'll have to shut down all the elevators, the best time is the wee hours, say between two and three in the morning, in the hope that all the tenants will be in their apartments. Because we don't have porters to carry late-night partygoers up the stairs to the umpteenth floor."

Kidron brightens. "Okay," he says, "I'll put up notices in the building and warn the residents not to get home late tonight. How long will it take?"

"You will be surprised to learn that despite my age this is the first time I have gone hunting for winds at night. Like surgery or war, you know when you start, but not when you'll finish."

The head of the tenants' committee takes it upon himself to summon a representative of the construction company to be present also.

"Talk tough to him, the way you do to me," Ya'ari advises. "Threaten him." And he eases the man out the door.

And now, of course, just as he is about to hurry to Gottlieb's factory to make good on his promise to Kidron, his employees come to him with questions and try to show him plans and diagrams. By the time he manages to get free of these responsibilities and arrives at the
elevator factory, it is dusk. And to his surprise, the blue ambulance is still there.

"Not only did I feed your father lunch with a spoon myself, and wipe away the crumbs," Gottlieb informs him, "we're also cutting him a new piston. Learn from this, young man, the power of old friendship. And it's best that a man have only one such dear friend, because two will break him."

"True," Ya'ari says, laughing. "But what about the dear son of the dear friend?"

And he tells him about his promise to hold a Night of the Winds. A skilled technician is needed, someone who can remove the roof of the elevator, then reassemble it.

"In the middle of the night? You know what that's gonna cost me?"

"It won't break you. Because we already paid that relative of yours in advance."

Gottlieb shoots Ya'ari an icy look.

In the past few years, Ya'ari has paid few visits to this factory. These days orders are placed online, and besides, the younger engineers in his firm are not enthusiastic about Gottlieb's elevators and fight for more up-to-date models that operate without machine rooms. Now he is amazed by how the factory has expanded. Big impressive cutting machines slice sheets of steel with high precision. Drill punches produce control panels. Remote-control robots assemble electric motors. The high-ceilinged halls are clean and orderly, if a bit dim, and skilled workers circulate among the machines, seeming slightly tense at the approach of the factory owner.

Gottlieb, far from letting himself be cowed by the Chinese elevators that Ya'ari's engineers have been recommending to the construction companies, has opened new markets for himself and now exports elevators to Turkey and Greece. He even gets orders from England. From the corner of his eye Ya'ari sees a new design wing, filled with engineers, technicians, and draftsmen, hired to compete with his own. And yet deep inside the thriving factory there is a small hall where merrily hums an ancient metal lathe, and here Ya'ari finds his father in his wheelchair, fascinated by the work and vibrating to its rhythms. In the corner sit Francisco and Hilario, silent and exhausted.

"Abba," he leans over and hugs his father, "are you convinced the lathe won't work if you don't stare at it?"

"That's what I tell him, too," Gottlieb says, "but your father apparently enjoys the chirping noises. His Filipinos are too quiet for him. Come, Amotz, let's take your father to our candle-lighting. You're about to see a Hanukkah menorah no less unusual than the elevator he built in Jerusalem."

The old man does not answer, merely looks with puzzlement at his friend and his son. Ya'ari wheels his father's chair after Gottlieb as the manufacturer leads the way to the cafeteria, where workers on the shift are assembling for the lighting of the candles. In the center of the hall stands a menorah fit for the factory, composed of nine tiny models of elevators, with a small bulb installed in each.

At the entrance is a basket of kippas, and on the tables are arrayed trays of small but still warm jelly doughnuts. The workers put on the skullcaps and crowd together silently. They know this menorah well and are no longer impressed. How many candles today? Gottlieb asks an Orthodox worker who stands ready to chant the blessings. Seven, says the man, and waits for a signal from the boss.

Gottlieb goes to a panel of numbered buttons and presses the red emergency switch, which lights up the shammash, a replica of the latest-model elevator produced at the factory; and the worker bursts into sacred melody, his Sephardic voice sweet and clear. As the blessings end, Gottlieb presses the seventh-floor button, and slowly, one at a time, seven more miniature elevators light up.

"Well, what do you say?" He turns proudly to the father and son. "A miracle like this would have astonished even the Maccabees."

Ya'ari chuckles and thinks good-naturedly, It's all right, there's this side to Gottlieb, too. But tomorrow night we'll finally light real candles with Daniela.

A
FTER THE
I
SRAELI
visitor's headache has been dissolved by a long, deep sleep, she showers and returns refreshed to the ground floor, where she finds the tables rearranged for the farewell dinner. The big table has been moved to the edge of the hall and placed upon a small wooden stage, then covered with an embroidered map of Africa. The remaining tables are positioned in three rows, as in a theater, with benches on one side only, so that diners will face the stage. In the open lot outside the building, the scientists are loading the pickup trucks with food coolers and duffel bags and new digging tools, and Daniela can also see a group of Africans in colorful clothes decorated with ribbons; some of them are leaning on long sharpened sticks. Yirmiyahu arrives from the infirmary, moving slowly, and on his way to take a shower and change his clothes he cautions his sister-in-law not to make light of the ceremonial dinner: For some reason they attach greater importance to you than you deserve.

"You know it's impossible to make me more important than I am," she teases him, "and what about you? How's your headache?"

He regards her soberly. Patience, he says. Tomorrow, when you're gone, the pain will pass. And without waiting for a reply or a protest he touches her shoulder in a gentle gesture of reconciliation, then hurries to his room.

Out of nowhere appears the wrinkled old groundskeeper, adorned with a sash, waving a huge branch. He grandly leads the Africans inside and instructs them to take seats at the three rows of tables. Who are these people? Daniela asks Sijjin Kuang, who with stately authority is assisting the old man in seating each guest in his proper place.

On Sunday nights, she tells the visitor, before departing for the new week of excavation, the members of the research team invite the tribal chiefs and heads of local clans to join in the farewell dinner, so they will feel they have a stake in the scientific work.

Sijjin Kuang seats the Israeli woman in the first row of tables, leaving empty places to her right and left for Yirmiyahu and herself. The cooks, in white toques, place ceramic pots on the tables and distribute pitchers of a yellowish drink. Yirmiyahu enters, his bald pate shiny and his clothing fresh, and sits down beside her and says, Europe becomes important to them even as they sense its growing alienation.

The old black man waves the branch, and the assembled rise to their feet. The scientists enter in a row, clad in black university gowns with sashes attached in the colors of their native countries' flags. Minus the North African paleontologist, the marchers are nine in number, led by the Tanzanian Seloha Abu, who assigns each member his place at the high table. And since the guests are very hungry and the food is piping hot, speeches are postponed till the meal's end and the eating begins, to be accompanied, in keeping with the British tradition that Dr. Kukiriza has brought with him from London, by small talk alone.

"Tell me," Daniela says suddenly to her brother-in-law in Hebrew, "you're sure you won't come back to Israel slightly delirious from all this?"

He puts down his fork.

"And who told you I'm coming back? You've been here for six days, and you still insist on not understanding where I stand. Nothing will draw me back to a country that has turned into a recycling plant."

"That's a novel definition."

"Here there are no ancient graves and no floor tiles from a destroyed synagogue; no museum with a fragment of a burnt Torah; no testimonies about pogroms and the Holocaust. There's no exile here, no Diaspora. There was no Golden Age here, no community that contributed to global culture. They don't fuss about assimilation or extinction, self-hatred or pride, uniqueness or chosenness; no old grandmas pop up suddenly aware of their identity. There's no orthodoxy here or secularism or self-indulgent religiosity, and
most of all no nostalgia for anything at all. There's no struggle between tradition and revolution. No rebellion against the forefathers and no new interpretations. No one feels compelled to decide if he is a Jew or an Israeli or maybe a Canaanite, or if the state is more democratic or more Jewish, if there's hope for it or if it's done for. The people around me are free and clear of that whole exhausting and confusing tangle. But life goes on. I am seventy years old, Daniela, and I am permitted to let go."

And he takes up the fork and plunges it into the meat.

Daniela wants to strike back indignantly, but stops herself. The flow of his words suggests that even if he has never performed this monologue for others, he has doubtless muttered it many times to himself.

The old African sets fire to the big branch and waves it, and the Tanzanian team leader rises to deliver the traditional address. Yirmiyahu whispers to his sister-in-law that although the man speaks in the local vernacular, all the members know this speech and can understand the meaning of every sentence. He is speaking on a favorite topic: man's dominance over fire and his ability to understand it, and even Yirmiyahu is able to comprehend part of the speech and to fill in the rest:

Fire is conceived of as a living thing. It moves about incessantly, changes its shape and color, eats, makes noises, provides heat. Man can create it or extinguish it, can blow on it to revive it or blow on it to put it out. Fire is the only thing in the world that man can kill and then bring back to life. Most of what man creates or produces depends on fire, and most destruction and ruin are connected with fire. Fire is a friend that brings life, that cleanses and purifies, and it is also a terrifying foe. Perhaps in the knowledge of fire is a key to the knowledge of death.